The Prism54.org domain redirects here. The old website and drivers are archived at http://lekernel.net/prism54/.

p54

p54 is a driver for Intersil's Prism54 chips series. It supports both older full-MAC devices (with new soft-MAC firmware) and newer soft-MAC devices. It is included in the Linux kernel.

caveats

Before you can use the hardware, you have to get the the right firmware.

supported chips

• ISL3877, ISL3880, ISL3890 and ISL3886 (miniPCI)

• ISL3886 + net2280 (USB, 1st generation with net2280 usb<->pci bridge)

• ISL3887 (USB, 2nd generation, native USB interface)

• ( STMicroelectronics' STLC4560 (SPI) - available in wireless-testing )

available devices

For a complete listing of supported products, see the device list.

firmware

There are several different firmwares for different hardware. so you have to pick the right one, download, rename to the listed name and put it into the right place... Normally this should be /lib/firmware. However some distributions put firmware in a different place.

please pick the right one for your device from the lists:

• for 2.6.29 kernels and above:

  • card type	required filename	kernel >= 2.6.29
    miniPCI / PCMCIA	isl3886pci	download
    USB 1st generation (ISL3886 + net2280)	isl3886usb	download
    USB 2nd generation (ISL3887)	isl3887usb	download
    SPI / stlc4560	3826.arm	Maxi's site

• for 2.6.28 kernels and older:

  • card type	required filename	older than 2.6.28	specially for 2.6.28
    miniPCI / PCMCIA	isl3886	download	download
    USB 1st generation (ISL3886 + net2280)	isl3890usb	download	download
    USB 2nd generation (ISL3887)	isl3887usb_bare	download	download

    Note: These firmwares are kept for compatibility reasons, in case your hardware doesn't work.

• More firmwares for all devices, even unsupported ones, can be found in Maxi's prism54 firmwares archive.

• Alternatively, firmware can be extracted from windows drivers with a tool called "fwextract3" available from http://lekernel.net/prism54/misc.html.

working

• Ad-Hoc, AP, mesh, monitor and station mode
• WMM/WME/802.11e (QoS)
• TPC and ERP
• Programmable LEDs
• Cryptographic accelerator for WEP, TKIP and CCMP
• Packet injection in monitor mode
• Power save management in station mode
• Supported band table (by radio chip):

  • ID	Chip name		802.11 b/g		802.11 a
    1	Duette3		yes		depends on hw
    2	Duette2		yes		depends on hw
    3	Frisbee		yes		no
    4	Crossbow		yes		yes
    5	Longbow		yes		no

not working yet

• regulatory domain codes
• Firmware scanning
• DFS / Radar Detection
• NITRO (Burst, Compression, Aggregation)

Enabling p54

To enable p54, you must first enable mac80211:

Networking Support --->
  Wireless  --->
    <M> Improved wireless configuration API
    <M> Generic IEEE 802.11 Networking Stack (mac80211)

You can then enable p54 in the kernel configuration under

Device Drivers  --->
  [*] Network device support  --->
        Wireless LAN --->
          [*] Wireless LAN (IEEE 802.11)
          <M>   Softmac Prism54 support
          <M>     Prism54 USB support
          <M>     Prism54 PCI support
          <M>     Prism54 SPI (stlc45xx) support

Contact

• IRC: #prism54 on freenode (#p54u is about a different driver for BSD)

• no special mailing list, use the linux wireless list for development issues